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After discussing Facebook’s Graph Search yesterday we now ask, would a business be able to carry on without ever using Social Media at all?

Taking all aspects that Social Media can offer to a business our answer is no, no business will be able to carry on without adopting Social Media at some point. While some will survive for a couple more years without engaging with customers on Twitter or Facebook, others will succumb to the ever growing risk of being in the middle of a crisis and not knowing where it started or how to end it.

But let’s speak about the most important sides of Social Media. The Tracking, Monitoring and Engagement side are a must if a business wants to succeed in the social world.

Twitter being one of the most popular platforms people use to express their opinions, how does a business keep itself updated without tracking these all important mentions? But most importantly, without any monitoring, how does a business even know there are current customers discussing or even complaining about their services in the social web?

These are all important actions that need to be carried out in order to be successful at Social Media and there are prime examples of how businesses fail to respond to their customers, many times.

See below the mentions we have tracked by a specific business, unfortunately these have not been responded to which leads us to believe if a crisis breaks loose this business won’t even know until its already too late.

Having a bad comment about you on the social web happens, but when there are several across different platforms then there is definitely something to worry about.

We used a random brand to conduct this analysis and as shown, there is reason for this brand to dive straight into Social Media and begin the long process of mending what is broken. These are simply some of the comments we came across for there are many more.

What do you think the easiest steps to resolve these issues are? Do you think there is still time?

Whether you’re trying to grab attention to your newspaper, e-mail or blog post, one constant has remained: Content is king. You can write the greatest headline in the world, but if the rest of the content doesn’t deliver, captivate readers or mesh with the target demographic, you’ll quickly lose interest. The secret to creating and maintaining buzz for your content is to write content your audience wants to read. That sounds simple, but knowing your audience — and what it wants — is anything but easy.

First, you need to identify your audience. There are several methods to identify your audience, such as determining keywords that are bringing users to your website, creating user personae and more. Once you’ve identified your audience, you should create content that speaks to each user persona. Do not stray from this concept, because you will lose readers or followers. Readers are finicky at the beginning of any article or post. If you don’t capture their attention with the title, the remainder of the content might as well be in a language they don’t understand.

For example, let’s say you operate a blog about the exam for certified public accounts. Who is your audience? There are a few user personae we can identify without doing much detailed analysis. You can easily create personae for your audience in the same manner.

Students: those in their early 20s who are working on an accounting bachelor’s or master’s degree, with the intent of taking the CPA exam eventually.

Entry-level professionals: early- to mid-20s professionals working full time at a public accounting firm, after attaining a bachelor’s or master’s degree. This group is most likely to be actively involved in accounting practices or preparing to become a CPA.

Career changers: adults looking to change careers or re-enter the workforce.

Professionals: licensed CPAs who are concerned about the future of the profession.

Let’s say we want to target entry-level professionals, because this is likely the largest of the five personae we have identified. Many of these individuals have probably taken entry-level jobs as an accountant but have not yet sat for the CPA exam. One of the greater stresses about this exam is finding out one’s score for each section. Though the exam is largely computerized, it can take a few months for scores to be reported to the appropriate governing body. So “CPA exam score release” is a hot topic and sure to draw attention from entry-level professionals because this demographic would be interested in knowing exam scores.

This would be a perfect theme or title to create your content around. When reading this blog for the first time, readers will immediately be locked in because the content pertains to their situation — not their past, not their future, but what they are actively involved in at the moment. Most readers and discussion groups talk about what’s happening now. What’s buzzing? By focusing your title and content on “the now” of your target audience, you have a much better chance of each reader reading your article or post from beginning to end, which is the goal of any writer.

When selecting a topic, there are a few tips to keep in mind.

Pick one that relates to at least one of your user personae. This drives at least one group of users to your content and is sure to relate to them.

Topics should be useful or answer a question. This encourages social sharing, allowing your content to reach beyond its page.

Pick a controversial or trendy topic. Readers usually show initial interest in current topics and trends compared with those of the past. That is, unless you are comparing a “now” topic with a past topic.

Limit the sales and marketing aspect of your content. If you’re only trying to sell a product or service, you will probably fail. No one likes to feel as though he or she has been sold, but everyone likes to buy.

Analyze solutions that have worked for others, and share them, because one can never have too many solutions. Solutions are exactly the type of content or discussion that goes viral.

Find out your user personae’s questions. Sites such as Yahoo! Answers and Quora can be a gold mine for content topics.

While there are tactics that can drive users to your content — using social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. — the simplest way to generate buzz is to produce great content. Know your audience, their concerns, their questions and their requests. Selecting the right topic and targeting your audience is the easiest way to generate buzz and keep users coming back.

We hope you all had a great weekend, it has been a long one over here!

How is SM treating you all? The more times goes by the more we realize that SM already plays a massive role in almost everything we do everyday and it will become even more essential in the coming years as the wheels of business turn faster and faster.

Social Networks are expanding more and more to fit their users’ needs and requirements but which will take the cake at the end of this long social battle? Which SM network do you think is the most valuable and why?

Let us know and also remember, we still want to hear from you regarding brands to go under the analysis tool so let us know who you want us to take a look at.

Like this:

O2 has been another victim of a good old crisis which have placed it right next to the likes of NatWest. With high volumes of complaints flooding in from all corners, how did O2 handle their crisis from a Social Media perspective?

As many other businesses, they struggled and are still struggling to keep up with all the customers complaining and targeting them on the social web. After carrying out an analysis on their crisis we could determine that with the right tools, they would have been able to contain this issue from the beginning which would have saved a lot of time.

Let the figures do the talking in this case.

This single analysis was carried out just from the 11th July to 12th July, the amount of mentions is extraordinary and frightening for a business.

If you would like to find out more about our services feel free to contact Peru Fourie on 02078145282 and we will be happy to help.